


I Heard Love is Blind

by cadmiumredvulpini



Category: Call Me By Your Name - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Infidelity, M/M, Oliver pov, Period-Typical Sexism, Stream of Consciousness, kind of, long sentences
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-26
Updated: 2020-03-17
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:27:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22422586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cadmiumredvulpini/pseuds/cadmiumredvulpini
Summary: My heart beat went staccato with the tempo; I could still remember the taste of my own come on the pads of those fingers. His fingers. Elio’s fingers.Elio. In New York.Four years later, Oliver attends a concert at Merkin Hall at the Hebrew Arts School. He finds Elio, a pianist for the Philharmonic, and finally meets “think of me”, Maynard. Not good at summaries but I think you’re going to like this one. Try reading it with Armie’s voice, I at least think it works.
Relationships: Elio/Maynard, Oliver (Call Me By Your Name)/Original Character(s), Oliver/Elio Perlman
Comments: 4
Kudos: 46





	1. Phantasy, Op. 47

**Author's Note:**

> This was a real day at Merkin Hall in New York, and the pieces are real, too, played in the order I wrote them in. [Here's the program.](https://archives.nyphil.org/index.php/artifact/56e19853-18b9-4e85-8b2a-c9ffd79d597f-0.1/fullview#page/2/mode/2up)

Abraham Goodman House, Manhattan, 1987. 

After the intermission, we returned to our seats in the hall, and immediately, the curtains drew back and with a sharp shriek of the violin: Phantasy Op. 47., a jarring, brutal Schoenberg piece that matched the building’s strong lines and raw concrete, glass and metal cutting through like violin bows piercing the air, windows coming through arpeggiated, like the piece’s stuttering piano accompaniment. Orchestra center, we watched transfixed as the violinist, eyes closed, brows furrowed, soldiered through the performance without sheet music, knowing every wayward stroke and tumultuous lurch by memory. And the pianist, his untamed curls rippling with each dramatic fermata, pale face crumpled with focus—the pianist: I followed the pianist’s expression, down his long, slender arms, to the sinewy fingers that rested on the piano keys. My heart beat went staccato with the tempo; I could still remember the taste of my own come on the pads of those fingers. His fingers. Elio’s fingers.

Elio. In New York.

Elio, his dark hair forming a scruffy, unshaved stubble on his jaw. His arms looked stronger, thighs filling out his pants more, shoulders stretching the fabric taut across his back, although the jacket did hug his form closer than was usual, something Elio would do. It was a two-piece midnight blue suit, which, when it caught the light in a certain way, looked like brushed metal, crumpled in all the right places, a statement of elegant nonchalance, relaxed indifference, utterly Elio, down to the silver fleur-de-lis patterned tie and the embroidered floral socks that peeked through the midnight slacks. Everything about him looked...older, more mature. No longer like the 17-year old he had left behind four years ago, with his long limbs and slender figure, alabaster like the Venus of Milo, soft, pliant, utterly sensual. He was more like David, now, wild curls caught in a gust of wind frozen in time, his body harder and more angular, skin as pale as ever.

The four years had been kinder to Elio than they were to me, who, with a two year old and a newly instated tenure position at Columbia under my belt, had served only to roughen my features, pale my skin with the pallor associated with air-conditioned classes in the summer and long hours poring over essays and exams in my office, and soften the hard lines of muscle around my chest, abdomen and arms. I still ran every morning when I could, but more often than not I spent the morning running across to the bodega to buy diapers when we had run short, or still asleep, having been up the whole night trying to soothe little Alexander, then rushing to class with a crumpled oxford shirt and mismatched socks. This was life, this was how it had been for the past two years, and while occasionally overwhelming and leaving me reeling in the bathroom of my office—which I had pitifully realized was the only space where I was truly alone and in private—was as good a distraction as any, from Elio, from Italy, from the Perlmans, from the slender, pale-faced men who stood at the corner of 42nd street, smoking, waiting, mocking me as if they knew that when I passed by their corner my heartbeat would quicken from a sudden gust of temptation that, on one occasion, had led me to the back of a theater house with my heart in my hand, cock too—I had paid too much and forgotten my coat, and had left as soon as I came and with it, my dignity. I was no longer the faithful, straight, married man I had been, or at least tried to be, since Italy. 

Since Italy.

A lot of things began and ended with the words, Since Italy. I had never known the inside of a molested peach ever again, since Italy, never attempted a smile like what had grown so naturally across my lips except when Elio had said something clever, or said anything at all, since Italy. Never known what it felt for my heart to quicken in its cage, beating out towards someone, for someone, in the direction of Elio, I had never tasted joy, in its purest, richest sense, except perhaps when I held my son in his sleep, except even that was different, still, since Italy. I’d never kissed a man since Italy, not even the boys at the Deuce I’d given into, no one since Italy. Since Elio.

When I had named my son Alexander, it was in no way to honor my Elio’s Hephaestion, no, not at all an homage to him and him only—it was the only name my wife and I had agreed on, and if by any circumstance it had looked like it, it was merely coincidence. And if the postcard I had stolen, think of me, was framed and hanging in my office where I spent my long hours in private, it was only since my wife had decided it was not a good fit for the house, and it had belonged to me only, a memory of my trip to Italy. And on the rare instance that I had given in to a wayward memory of a young Bach piece and torrid summer afternoons shirtless in the parlor, finding myself with my hand in my trousers and my oxford shirt half unbuttoned, the bolt to my office door fastened and the postcard having fallen into my lap of its own mind, the reverse side open, revealing two words, which I would whisper to myself, then moan, as I lurched forward and tried not to spill on any of my documents, that was also entirely, by coincidence. A man had only so much he could take without giving in to the pleasures of the flesh, especially alone, in the privacy and solitude of his office, especially since Italy.

As abruptly as it had began, the piece had ended, to a stilted applause, at first, which precluded a second round of applause, more pronounced, now, as Elio and the violinist gave their bows. My eyes quickly sought his, a flash of recognition, a glimmer of a smile, the smile he used to give me, wide, teeth showing, eyes crinkling at the corners, nostrils quick and dilated, that first smile he’d given me while we were wading in the shallow spring waters from the Alpi Orobie…there it was! Elio! My Elio, my smile, like stars shining through the trees on a summer night, how I wanted to kiss it, for the first time in four years I felt what I had felt in Italy, that spark of pure, immutable joy that filled my senses and seared my veins and cooked me from the inside out, Elio, my Elio, who bowed not once, but twice, pride beaming in his eyes.

His eyes that permitted to cross everyone in the audience’s gaze but mine own, as if some damask had obscured me from his view of the entire hall, as if I had been standing directly behind him, too poignant not to notice, not to catch the light of my blonde hair or my stance or my smile, that beamed at him and only for him, as if the performance had been entirely about him, as if the hall had been empty, as empty as the parlor of the villa one afternoon, when a heat-induced torpor had fallen on everyone except us, and had left us the only survivors awake and with the energy to sit on the piano bench, him saddled on my lap and cradled in my arms as he plunked for me on the piano, something he’d always only done alone but had felt comfortable enough to show me, to let me into his private world and watch the almost pornographic rising of his hips as he struck a key with fervor, or the way his face contorted, pinched in a way he had only done when he was in the throes of orgasm, and I had given him this same smile I gave him now. But today we were not in the parlor, and I was a face among the crowd, invisible. As if we had traded places, I was Elio and he was Oliver, in Italy four years ago when, in some twisted game of desire he had decided to ignore me outright, as if he had forgotten my name, my face. I was Elio and he was Oliver, who had promised to be there when my nose had bled but had went to the bar in B. to play poker. I was Elio and he was Oliver, who had listened to me speak on the dinner table during drudgery but looked away as soon as I noticed, pretending not to have listened. Oliver who I shared the balcony with, Oliver who occupied my room, my home, my heaven, while he read Heraclitus and I, transcribing my sheet music, feigned complete indifference but was burning to be given attention. I was Elio and he was Oliver.

The moment—my entire life—passed. He walked off the stage when his performance was over and I followed him with my eyes as he sauntered off stage left. The bassoon began mocking me, almost immediately, in the next piece, its deep metal baying like a hound, as if I was the comic relief in some musical caricature. My heart drumming in my chest, I excused myself and apologized to my wife, unsure of whatever excuse I had used that was related to the bathroom or getting some air, which, due to the severity of the Schoenberg I think anyone would quite understand. I left my seat and followed down the aisle until I was past the cushioned doors and out in the hallway, where I had some sense of aloneness, to compose myself. I breathed in, this time slowly and deliberately.

Elio was here! Was he a concert pianist for the philharmonic? Was he studying at Juilliard? His father had neglected to mention, but then again, in our correspondences we tended to neglect the entire summer of 1983 completely. I did not know what to make of this, this distance, or lack thereof, and how it would affect me. How it would change things. If it would. I was a changed man, I was a new man. I was a father. A tenured professor. Gone were the proclivities of a twenty-four year old graduate student and with it, the games I used to play with boys my age. WIth men. But the summer in Italy? Elio? Had they gone completely, if at all? Had my entire life been the intermission and again did I find myself outside a concert hall, steps away from the orchestra. Did I dare enter?

I did not have time to decide—to my left and a few paces away was another door, which exited immediately from the stage, and from it, emerged Elio. He was slighter than I had perhaps imagined him on the stage, on the piano—he was not entirely like he was four years ago, he was not preserved as immaculately as the memory of our first kiss, but he was not as deified and fictionalized as I had imagined him to be, perhaps the stage did have some magic of magnanimity after all—but he looked even better. He was more real, more nuanced, without the extreme lights and shadows of the stage and with only the dim electric light of the hallway and the soft reach of a distant afternoon sun through the windows above. He was still David, and yet he was also Venus, both of them, both rising from the foam and alabaster white, slender and sinewy, soft and angular, hard lines and pliant curves, he was whatever metaphor of beauty I could attempt to come up with. I flustered. I did not know what to do. I was afraid I was invisible. I was yet again Elio, and he, Oliver. Would I call him by my name? Would I call out to him at all? What if he truly did not recognize me, I thought, then quashed it immediately. How could he forget?

My legs had taken me to him on their own accord, and then, slowly and then all at once, Elio filled my senses. I was heady from the light that sparked in his eyes, (he recognized me!) and the smile that tugged at the corner of his lips. “Elio!” I said, failing to stop my arms which had, like my legs, pulled him to me on their own accord—he was heavier, bigger, more mature, more everything in all the ways that my hug and my arms reached for more for the breadth and depth of him than I had last remembered. “You’ve grown,” I sputtered pathetically, as my nose sniffed at the top of his head, smelled the fragrance of his chamomile-scented shampoo and even the deep-seated sweat that could not erase the scent of Italy through every wash. Could not erase the scent of summers and afternoons and kisses and Italy and my life. I had entered the concert hall, and the orchestra had begun playing again.

“Oliver!” He said back, when I had finally let him go. “You’re…” My breath bated, sucked my stomach in, fixed my shoulders, in the split second that it had taken him to look at me from head-to-toe. “Exactly as I remember.” As I had dreamed you were. It was unspoken, but it was what I wished he had said. But it was impossible for him not to notice—I was young but I was also sure you could tell “father” from the baby saliva that had stained all of my shirts, or the imperfect shave that a bachelor would never sport, or the fingers softened by immeasurable baby lotion and baby oils and diaper rash creams. Elio, be honest, I’ve changed, grown in some ways and shrunk in others. Elio we are not exactly as we remember.

“You look great,” I said, reaching around his shoulder, thumb rolling on the bone and fingers arpeggiating on the back of his (more muscled) shoulder. Like I had done for him on the volleyball court and he had shrugged it off. Great, perhaps, was the biggest understatement of the century.

“Thanks,” He said, then shrugged (an entirely European idiosyncrasy) but not shy away from my touch. But not into it either—did I expect him to swoon into me like a virgin? He was no virgin. My Elio was now likely as far from a virgin as I had been when I was in Italy that summer—I’d revisit that thought later, as well as the questions that it entailed: did he have others? Did he meet someone? Was he in love? Was he married? Was there a later?

“The piece was a bit difficult, especially with the syncopation, but it wasn’t bad wasn’t it?” He smiled at me, then, shrugged again, and, how could I forget? There it was, he had done it on the first day I saw him until the last. He rolled his fingers into the hollow of his throat and rested his chin on the back of his hand, knuckles against the straight column of his neck. Was he drawing attention there? At the soft skin of his neck? His fingers pointing down to his shirt? Did he expect me not to notice, not to remember?

How could I forget, Elio? How could you?

I swallowed, even after four years he still asked me what I thought of him. How highly I thought of him. How much I thought of him. “Not bad at all. You were...” perfect. You were perfect, Elio. Are perfect. He smiled at me, did I say that out loud? I smiled back. My eyes were flicking between his smile, his eyes, his hair, his neck, his hands, would I touch them again? Would I see him again? As soon as I had seen him I had already thought about leaving him. Or him leaving. I was Elio and he was Oliver, yet again, standing on the train platform. His eyes shifted to something behind me.

“Elio! Tu étais parfait!”

Someone, rather. That someone had also managed to successfully voice what I could not. What I didn’t need to.

“Maynard, c'est Oliver, il était comme toi.” There it was, from the little french I could understand he had said I was like him. “Il est resté deux ans après votre séjour.”

I was like him? What did he mean? I looked at the man now standing beside my Elio. He was shorter than me, not much taller than Elio. He was brunette, unlike me. Paler than me, but not unlike the pallid complexion I had acquired in my days teaching. He was more European than me, that straight nose, quick nostrils, there was something about his eyes that spoke to me about his time in France, of what he had done, who he had done, Elio? He was built similarly to me, if not a bit slighter, but perhaps less the natural sinew of a runner but the manicured brawn of a gymnast. Perhaps a dancer? Maybe another member of the orchestra—

Maynard. The postcard. Think of me.

It couldn’t be. I had stolen that postcard. I had taken all memory of Maynard from Elio. Monet’s Berm was now mine and not his, in all the ways. I had appropriated his note and made it mine. Cor cordium. It was mine. Elio was mine. Then, all of a sudden, like wildfire, my insides had burned again, blackening my memories. Had Monet’s Berm been just as much Maynard’s as mine? Was my room, our room, just as much mine as it was his? Was Elio?

I did not want to think of it but already I could feel the fire ripping me apart from the inside. The fire was so close, threatening to tear down the Perlman’s villa and burn down heaven, burn down our room and the parlor and Monet’s berm and Alpi Orobie and all of Italy. Burn down Elio.

Was I a summer regularity. Was I as pedestrian as they went, came and left inside the professor’s son. Had he done this with the others? Immediately I regretted these thoughts. As quickly as the fire had spread had I extinguished it, kept it for later. Later.

As soon as Elio had spoken I noticed how his eyes jumped immediately to mine, then back again in the general direction of our conversation. Almost imperceptible. As if he was seeking my approval, this is Maynard, Oliver, he is like you, he is the original. I looked at him, suddenly remembering what look I could give him that gave away all that bubbled inside me but simultaneously all that I didn’t care. It was a look I had given him on the dinner table, on our bike rides in B., in heaven; a look, almost glare, of icy indifference, which, retrospectively was a childish attempt at a code (which had worked in many respects, but too late, much too late) to convey my longing and attention. It had worked then and it did now, I felt him swallow, as I did, hoping that somehow he would understand. Or did I hope that he wouldn’t? That he would see that cold glare and somehow, not see all the fire that threatened to burn him down, and finally, like he was Oliver and I Elio, he would leave me on that train platform, and let the concert play without me.

Maynard put his hand forward, intending me to take it, and I had all the propensity to simply walk away and leave it unshaken. But I did. He was like me and I would shake his hand. Mon semblable—mon frére! My twin who had his dark hair, my twin who had his pale skin and—had Elio. How we were alike I could never see, he had so much more in that respect. I had failed in the Elio department.

“Oliver,” I said, gripping his hand tightly. It was a firm handshake, if you could tell a man apart from his handshake, then Maynard was no one. It was absolutely generic, indifferent even—oh, he had responded in kind to the icy indifference I had decided to put on. He knew the code as well as I did, as well as Elio.

“What do you do, Oliver?” He asked me. Elio looked on, unaware of the trenches I had begun digging.

“I teach Classics at Columbia.” I smiled at him, teeth bared. “And you?”

“Elio,” I thought Maynard would say, “I did Elio, in our apartment, in our car, on the subway, in the park—wherever I could do him. I took Elio now that you can’t. I took him in as many ways and even more than you have, have taken him to dinner, taken him to bed, to all the places you never dared walk with Elio in the open.” I shuddered at the thought.

“I’m a curator at the Met.” What was he doing here, then? This was the Hebrew Arts School, he had no place here. He looked to Elio, as if to say “should I tell him?” An imperceptible breath, then: “It was my last day here when Elio started shaking the place up.”

So he’s Jewish? I looked to Elio but I was met with a bashful smile, half-turned away from me. Half-yes, Oliver, he was you before you were you, who were mine. If that was the game we were playing, then “Alright it was nice meeting the both of you.”

“Stay awhile.” Elio shrugged and pulled me closer with nothing but the force of his gaze. I didn’t budge. 

“I have to get back to my wife. She’s fond of—“

“Just a cigarette?” — “Alright, it was nice meeting you too, Oliver.”

“You too, Maynard.” Then, “I quit smoking.”

Both were lies.

“Later.” I said it almost without thinking. Elio was right about that, it was a crude, however sufficient enough surrogate for goodbye or “I’m sorry I’ve got to go,” or “I’m not interested in this conversation anymore,” that didn’t appear as dismissive as it was casual nonchalance. I looked at Elio, and then at Maynard. If he had noticed any change in my demeanor he didn’t pick up on it. Then Elio did not tell him about me. Why would he? I left him.

I am Oliver and he is Elio, after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you liked it! Leave me a comment and kudos, LMK where I can improve and what you liked!
> 
> Here's a performance of Phantasy Op. 47 from the New England Conservatory on [Youtube.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNEs8__FPc0)
> 
> Here’s how the next chapter opens:  
>  __  
> “I returned to my wife not long after, which is something I say far too often. She asked what had taken me so long and I was tempted to tell her I had been smoking, if only to spite her. She had disapproved of me smoking as much as she had disapproved of everything else, like the scent I returned with after a run, which Elio had always savored, had always nourished like the heat inside me that it entailed. Warm, wet heat. She disapproved of when I would come up to her from behind and press into her back and make her feel how much I missed that heat, how I wanted her to nourish that heat in me. I forget sometimes she is my wife, even when I am fucking her.”


	2. Septet in E-flat Major, Op. 20

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oliver returns to his wife.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short chapter for now. Feeling uninspired but I hope you all stay safe and healthy! Let me know what you think.

I returned to my wife not long after, which I realized was something I say far too often. She asked what had taken me so long and I was tempted to tell her I had been smoking, if only to spite her. She had disapproved of me smoking as much as she had disapproved of everything else, like the scent I returned with after a run, which Elio had always savored, had always nourished like the heat inside me that it entailed. Warm, wet heat. She disapproved of when I would come up to her from behind and press into her back and make her feel how much I missed that heat, how I wanted her to nourish that heat in me.

I forget sometimes she is my wife, even when I am fucking her.

Before my son, that was as good a distraction as any. Fucking her. Who knew fucking your spouse would become such a chore in the early throes of parenthood. I used to fuck her and she used to beg me to put a baby in her. I suppose that was all that it was for her: she was a feminist, how they came around these days, like it was opposite day. First they said ‘I can fuck when I want to.’ I don’t have to do chores if I don’t have to. Then they said I won’t fuck even if I wanted to. Sex is for making babies. A chore. I can do chores if I wanted to. Women elude me, I’d like to say, but in truth it was just my wife. My wife, quite literally, eludes me.

The fire in my gut started again, fanned by that fucking bassoon, when i had settled my seat: a Beethoven septet, something more tame for the audience I supposed, to cleanse the palette so to speak. Immediately my mind went back to Schoenberg’s unresolved chords. Dissonant notes. Elio.

He was probably outside, I imagined, hailing a cab with one hand, holding a cigarette with the other, rushing to get home, always rushing, always fumbling the transitions between two things like to be caught between either was a crime. I wonder now if he was caught between me and Maynard. And where he was rushing off to next.

I never asked for his number, his hotel room, whether he was seeing Maynard (of course), how often they fucked and if he’d let me, if I was any better. Never asked if that was all I was. A lousy fuck from a naive American who’d never been to Italy and threw around Dante and Bruñuel and everything patrician Italians liked to yammer on about.

Then it was the bassoon again, on and on and on with its deep, brassy baying, vibrating, tormenting me. It made me restless. I could be running. I could be at home with my son. I could be grading papers or writing papers back in my office. I could be in a cab following another as it wound through the city and eventually stopped outside an artfully dilapidated apartment, doors decayed, but hinges new. I could be outside his door, one step from unpausing the rest of my life. I could be back in Italy.

My foot, having travelled a small distance from its restless off-tempo beating on the carpet, snagged somewhere. It was my wife’s stiletto, firmly dug into the plush carpet. The tip of my shoe rubbed up against the sole of her inclined heel. I followed the straight line that emerged from the seam of her shoe up her skinny calves and her slim thighs, then, without taking a detour up her slip my eyes followed that invisible line up her navel, her pashmina, then between her breasts, to the straight column of her neck. If I could love anything more about her than her languid disposition and her abstinent forbearance it was her neck. White and tall and fit perfectly between my palms. Just so, that when I choke her when I fuck her I can feel her spine closing between my fingers and pretend I’m halfway to killing her. But I rarely ever fuck her anyway to derive enough pleasure from that.

But there was one more fantasy her neck evoked, one that almost forgives completely my dilettante feminist wife. When I bruise it just so the delicate skin flushes blue instead of red, cool not angry, an elegant blemish, if there were ever such a thing. Cool against the skin and against the blistering background of an Italian summer.

Today, her neck was bare. Unadorned save for a silver chain around her throat, loose and just fitting into the cleavage of her chest. I found my hand reaching for it, fingers playing with the cold metal under the fabric of her shawl. Just teasing her skin, soft, supple. I could feel her grow hot, but her face didn’t move. I stared at her neck as my fingers dared further down, first between her breasts and then finally between her thighs, through the fine fabric of her black dress, nipped on the side like it was wrapped around her flimsily—such was vogue nowadays. I could feel nothing there, as I was wont to discover.

She usually never let me go this far, but today I tested her patience. Maybe she was just too bored and let her lech of a husband off the hook today. God knows I tried enough. I felt the seam between her thighs and her pelvis and the muscles underneath move, tensing and relaxing—clenching and unclenching, her pelvic muscles, thigh muscles, responding to my ministrations. Maybe it was the concerto, maybe it was Elio, but for once in the longest time since my son I was touching my wife, and it felt like the first.

I felt myself sweating, easing my gaze from the performance on stage and my wife, whose eyes stayed fixated forward. Her thighs opened a bit, willing but restrained.

Willing, but restrained. That felt familiar, like Elio had done at first. Before I and the heat of summer turned us into nothing but wanton animals in the night. Or in the parlor on an empty afternoon, my cock between his thighs as he played Liszt up and across the scale. Or under the peach trees after Anchise had gone to bed. Or that once in the attic.

I stiffened further, could feel myself through my pants, loose enough to accommodate my length. I remembered the feeling of complete and utter depravity, love and lust completely unhindered, bursting forth from me as I watched him descend into the same. The bruised peach, not a cool and refined sort of bruised: red and angry and white, streaked on the inside. Elio’s come.

My wife was close, it felt. Her eyes were almost glassy in their dedication to stay transfixed on whatever was happening onstage. I didn’t bother looking anymore, my gaze caught between there and across the pond. I almost forgot about her, my hand had been stroking her on its own ministrations and my other on myself likewise.

I had sunk my teeth into the bruised flesh, and altogether it was sweet, salty, bitter. I expected nothing else, but it wasn’t the taste but how it felt in my mouth. Soft, smooth, and then slimy and sticky. Almost dry in the space between my teeth and lips. How Elio felt in my mouth. I had taken him in again, immediately after I swallowed him down. Just to compare the difference. He almost cried, in what I had understood first as pleasure, then learned it was anguish. I felt him burn inside and extinguish himself with tears on the outside. He kissed me, I kissed him, felt him squirm and stay and hold me but push me away. Willing, but restrained. In the end it wasn’t his naïvete that had spurned me, it was mine.

I let him fuck me, then. When the sun had set he was deep inside me and he had his arms on my shoulders, holding me up as I had my hands around his neck, framing his beautiful face, illuminated by the stray beams of moonlight that found their way to us. His perfect neck, almost like my wife’s. Long and erudite.

That was it, which had sent me over the edge. My wife’s pashmina didn’t stay on her neck long after that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry if the heterosexual stuff is a squick. Here's a performance from the Curtis Institute on [Youtube.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Roz3ToVR8zk)


End file.
